Irrational over-exuberance at India Inc?

Over the last couple of months I read books about India, in part as preparation for my first job in India. I just finished reading The Elephant Paradigm by Gurucharan Das. Before that, I read In spite of the Gods by Edward Luce and also India Unbound by Gurucharan Das. All these books tout the supposedly phenomenal growth rate, the booming middle class, democracy, business process outsourcing (BPO) etc. I came across an article titled Bye Bye NRI written by someone who lives in Washington DC like me. There are reams of writing like this, all based on a core central theme, that the Indian elephant, note, it is not the tiger anymore, cannot be stopped. They sometimes also briefly touch upon on the problems but the overriding theme seems to be India will be a super power to reckon with.

I am not sure if all this writing is based on hope because these authors seem a little carried away and I would add a "Reader Beware" in bold. Before being dismissed as a pessimist, I would like to say I am more of a realist. On the other hand I hope the day comes when 1 rupee will fetch 2 dollars. But I have doubts about whether these authors really tried living and working like the "bright young professionals" who are part of the “India Shining” brigade.

I had to visit Bangalore for a couple of days. The flight to Bangalore was for 7:30 am and I left home around 5:30 am. There is this turn to get into the airport and at 6:00 am on a Friday it was chaotic. The traffic lights were not working and there were no cops and it was surreal. There were cars, cabs buses trying to get into the airport and people walking to the airport. There was also other traffic in different directions held up in the middle and there was this mess with vehicles separated by an inch or two honking and people yelling. This was in Mumbai, India's commercial capital. It took around half an hour with people getting out of cars to direct traffic.

People rushed into the plane, as usual and the door was closed at 7:20 am. Then the same scene was repeated as there was a traffic jam with planes taking off and landing and our plane finally took off at 8:40 am, more than an hour behind schedule. The fun continued in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, where it took us 45 minutes to get out of the airport, amidst the wild honking and smoke from the exhaust.

I can go on and on with many such stories, but the point is the infrastructure is crumbling as it was when I left the country. You can get a cell phone in a day, but the number of dropped calls is too many to count. You can walk out with a high speed wireless internet card in 10 minutes, which at times is slower than a 28 kbps modem.

I did visit Leela Palace in Bangalore and it was great though the cocktails were close to 25 dollars, due to the weak dollar, oops I mean the “strong rupee”. It was more like the world described by these authors. A world that is very far out of reach for about 99 % of the population. Maybe that number has improved from 99.7% from before. Unfortunately, once you get out of the hotel in your air conditioned, chauffeured car you will enter the life of the rest of the Indians: potholes, traffic jams, honking and the heat and dust which fortunately, the authors and I, do not have to deal with while getting excited about reading an article about the number of cell phones in India exceeding 250 million.